Operationalisation of a Positioning Model in Ferry Services: an Eastern Mediterranean Case

A model is developed to identify the comparative positioning of Turkish ferry operators vis-a-vis their European Union competitors in the Eastern Mediterranean market. Given the nature of the ferry business, the model is based on principles of service marketing. The paper concentrates on the operationalisation of the positioning model by using multidimensional scaling (MDS): a multivariate analysis technique. Data include various characteristics of the ferry operators representing the supply side of the market, grouped under different marketing mix elements of service marketing. Results are further analysed in order to identify the relative positioning of ferry operators in the Italy-Greece-Turkey corridor, for the year 1994. The paper concludes that Turkish operators are clearly identifiable in most instances, positioned separately from their Greek counterparts.International Journal of Maritime Economics (1999) 1, 73–86; doi:10.1057/ijme.1999.13